The methods adopted in the related art to carry out various types of management for construction machines are explained below.
(1) Used Vehicle Assessment Management
When determining the assessed value of a used construction machine, the current condition of the construction machine needs to be considered in addition to the past maintenance history, the number of operating hours and the like. In the related art, the condition of a construction machine is determined by a service person who travels to the work site with a specific assessment form (checklist) for the construction machine to be assessed and fills out the form with the results of the assessment with regard to the various check items. Then, he manually calculates the assessed value with a pocket calculator or the like by incorporating the history information and the operation information mentioned above into the assessment results. However, a method that involves such manual work is not efficient.
(2) Inspection Information Management
When a construction machine such as a hydraulic excavator is inspected in the related art, a service person visits the work site with a specific inspection form (checklist), fills out the form with the results of the inspection of various check items, takes the form back to the office and enters the contents of the form into a specific database from a terminal. This method requires the service person to fill out the form and then enter the contents into the database, and is not efficient. In addition, there is a problem with this method in that if the inspector is a service person dispatched by a rental company, the inspection information is not readily available to the manufacturer.
(3) Operation Information Management
There are monitoring systems in the related art (e.g., Japanese Laid Open Patent Publication No. H 10-140616) achieved by providing a device that collects data related to the operating status of a work machine such as a construction machine or a dump truck at individual work machines and allowing the data collected at the collection device to be transmitted to a remote base station through a means for communication. While such a system achieves an advantage in that the operating status of each work machine can be accurately ascertained on the base station side, the operation data cannot be checked or overwritten on the work machine side.